The Book of Psalms

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  • Psalm 108

    (a song, a lyric, of David) * * * With minor changes, Psalm 108 consists entirely of the final five verses of Psalm 57 (Ps 57:7-11) plus the final eight verses of Psalm 60 (Ps 60:5-12). This editing raises important questions with implications for the art of psalms. What’s gained by what’s been lost, left Read more

  • Psalm 107

    * * * The fifth collection in the book of Psalms begins with the ambitious Psalm 107, whose quadrupled double refrain marks out two pairs of large-scale parallels. The psalm’s adroit wordplay deepens its thematic point: that the Lord’s care (1, 42-43) leaves hints everywhere, even down to the semantic dismantling of the key clause Read more

  • Psalm 106

    * * * Book Four of the Psalter ends not with a bang, nor with a whimper, but with harangue, a whole litany of charges. Psalm 106 accuses Israel down a long and slippery slope of crimes. It slides from character traits like desire, envy, recalcitrance, and impatience to such practices as tolerance and accommodation Read more

  • Psalm 105

    * * * A handful of little verbal similarities offer one, surface-level explanation for why Psalm 105 should follow Psalm 104, though the difference in quality and sensibility between the two psalms could not be more profound. The mirrored sequence from Genesis to Exodus of creation story, narratives of patriarchs, and the Exodus offers another Read more

  • Psalm 104

    * * * The most sublime of all psalms, a triumph of biblical poetry, Psalm 104 is also the most potent natural theology ever written, its purpose not to deduce nor prove God’s existence but to celebrate the world as a surfeit of movement and light. The poetry dazzles from the start. Its praise of Read more

  • Psalm 103

    (of David) * * * Like Psalm 102, to which it seems a response, Psalm 103 features a trio of similes. Instead of three lonely birds, however, the comparisons at the heart of Psalm 103 map distance in three dimensions: the maximal heights of the Lord’s care (11), the maximal horizons to which the Lord Read more